I was born a passionate
person—with a larger-than-life type-A personality. I have
lived with this high enthusiasm, for better or worse, every
single day. My most memorable childhood lesson was about the
importance of honesty. My parents would say, “Johnny, no
matter what you did wrong (and I was into a lot of
mischief), or what else is going on in your life, as long as
you tell the truth everything will work out.”

My medical education began in
October of 1965, at age 18, when I suffered a massive stroke
that left me completely paralyzed on the left side of my
body for 2 weeks, and I remain noticeably physically
weakened 44 years later. This was my first real contact
with the businesses of medicine, and without this
opportunity I would have never become a physician. I was
raised in a lower middle class family in the suburbs of
Detroit, Michigan. My parents worshipped medical doctors as
if they were exceptional beings possessing near God-like
qualities. I was an ordinary person, at best; therefore, I
never even dreamed of aspiring to such heights—that is,
before my fateful hospitalization.

My exalted view of doctors
changed during my 2-week stay at Grace Hospital. As “a
medical curiosity”—suffering a stroke at such a young age—I
attracted some of Detroit’s finest medical specialists.
After examining me, I asked each new doctor: “What caused my
stroke?” “What are you going to do for me?” “How are you
going to make me better?” “When can I go home?” The typical
response was nonverbal; shaking their heads from side to
side, they walked out of my room. I figured I could do
that. After 2 weeks of the “best care” modern medicine had
to offer, I left the hospital AMA (against medical advice)
and returned to my undergraduate college studies at Michigan
State University. Soon my learning was on a track straight
to medical school. Looking back at my diet, I can give
credit to eggs, double cheese pizzas, and hot dogs for my
brain damage, and my good fortune.

After
three years of undergraduate work I entered the College of
Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Medical school
was fun and easy for me. During my senior year I met Mary, a
surgical nurse, while helping with a hip operation. After a
short courtship we married and planned our escape to
Hawaii. In 1972, I started my internship at Queens Medical
Center in Honolulu on Oahu. We fell in love with those
exotic islands, and then destiny took us to the Big Island
of Hawaii the next year to work and live. As one of four
medical doctors at the Hamakua Sugar Plantation, I had
responsibility for 5000 people—laborers and their families.
I did everything medical for them from delivering their
babies to signing their death certificates. This
responsibility forced me to become the best doctor I could
be; after all, I was “it;” the nearest specialist was 42
miles south in the small town of Hilo.

Lessons about Medical
Practice

Under my care my patients with
chronic problems seemed to never get well. I used to play a
game with many of these fine people (unbeknownst to them):
“Who has the most patience?” They would come to my office
with a complaint for which I would prescribe a pill. On the
way out of my office I would say, “If this pill doesn’t
work, come back and I will try another one.” Upon their
return the scenario would be repeated. Soon they would tire
of the experience and stop coming, but I never ran out of
pills. Consistent failures led to me to the conclusion that
the fault was mine: “I was a bad doctor.” Had I not learned
my medical school lessons? Maybe I had spent too much time
at the beach during my Hawaiian internship?

In an effort to remedy my
apparent lack of medical competence, after three years as a
sugar plantation doctor, I moved back to Oahu, with Mary and
my two young children, and entered the University of Hawaii
Medical Residency Program. Now I would learn effective ways
to help my patients. Unfortunately, more than two years of
intense training under the guidance of some of the best
professors in the world left me still seeking the secrets to
health and healing. These special doctors obtained no
better results with their prescriptions than I had—the
patients stayed ill. In 1978, I passed the American Board
of Internal Medicine, certifying my competence in orthodox
medical knowledge. Even though I was now a board certified
Internist, I had to look back to my days on the sugar
plantation for the solutions I was seeking.

Basic Nutrition from My
Plantation Patients

From my patients at the
Hamakua Sugar Plantation, between 1973 and 1976, I had
learned the cause of over 80% of the diseases afflicting
people in North America and the rest of the Western world.
My elderly patients had immigrated to Hawaii from China,
Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, where rice was food. They
brought their culture with them. Their children, tempted by
Western foods, slowly changed. The third generation, had
essentially given up rice and vegetables for meat, dairy,
and junk. For all three generations, their health reflected
their diet. The first generation immigrants were trim,
active, and medication-free into their 90s. They had no
diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or cancers of the
breast, prostate, or colon. Their children became a little
fatter and sicker, and most of their grandchildren had lost
all of their immunity to obesity and common diseases—in
every way of appearance and health, they were full-fledged
Americans.

My observations contradicted
two basic beliefs I had held since childhood. The first was
that as we age, we naturally become fatter and sicker. The
second was that a well-balanced diet was best. Before my own
eyes I saw fully functioning elders thriving on grains and
fruits and vegetables. With the inclusion of the two other
basic food groups—meat and dairy—the progeny failed.

The most impressive example of
the potential for extraordinary health provided by a starch
(rice) based diet came from some special
Filipinos—specifically, family units consisting of an
elderly man, a very young wife, and their children. After
saving for years and then retiring, single men traveled to
the Philippines in search of a young bride. In my office
every day I witnessed what can best be described as
“natural Viagra.” Men in their 70s and 80s were starting
new families and demonstrating physical functions many
American men only fantasize about after their 50s. These
Filipino septuagenarians also expected to see their young
children grow into adults, and they did. This virility and
optimism was from their simple diets.

My Hawaii Library
Experience

My plantation days left me
with a clear understanding of the power of a healthy diet to
prevent disease, but the full potential of diet-therapy only
became apparent after my research began at the Hawaii
Medical Library in 1976. Reading through the scientific
journals I learned that many other doctors before me had
made the same discoveries as I had: Diets of common
starches, such as rice and potatoes, resulted in robust
health, and meat and dairy destroyed people’s physical
condition. Then an even more important breakthrough was
revealed to me. These pioneer scientists reported that once
people stopped eating the foods that made them sick, they
recovered. They described weight loss, relief of chest
pains, headaches, and arthritis. Kidney and heart failure,
diabetes, and many more troubles were reversed. Volumes of
research written over the previous 50 years in these library
journal pages showed me how my patients could be cured with
one big simple solution: a starch-based diet.

Challenging the
System—Asbestos in the Rice

My first experience with
fighting big business came after newspaper headlines in 1978
warned the citizens of Hawaii about cancer risks from
asbestos exposure—a common occurrence for shipyard workers
and for children because of schools built with these
materials. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Honolulu
Advertiser asking: why worry about these minor sources
of exposure when our citizens are eating hundreds of
millions of tons of asbestos-coated rice annually? After
milling brown rice to white, the kernel is exposed and
easily spoils. To prevent this spoilage the rice was coated
with talc powder. Talc is an amorphous form of magnesium
silicate. Asbestos is the same material in a fibrous form.
You cannot mine talc without the asbestos. After a yearlong
fight with the rice companies, I won and talc was removed
from the rice sold in Hawaii, California, and Puerto Rico,
and replaced with a coating of glucose. No personal
repercussions followed for me.

Challenging the
System—Informed Consent for Breast Cancer

In 1980, I was approached by a
citizen-group in Honolulu, which was trying to get an
informed consent law passed, requiring doctors to tell
women their surgical options when faced with breast cancer.
Massachusetts and California had already passed similar
laws. The reason such laws were needed is that doctors were
not telling women that surgery did not improve survival;
because the disease has already spread to the rest of a
woman’s body in most cases, long before the discovery of the
tumor in her breast (even with a mammogram). Simply put: a
lumpectomy or a mastectomy made no difference in her day of
death—the choice was to live with or without her breast. I
thought a woman should know the facts in case she might want
to choose less mutilating surgery.

The fight took two years in
the state legislature. My final faceoff in front of the
Hawaii lawmakers was with members of the Hawaii Cancer
Society and the University of Hawaii Medical School. They
lost and the nations third informed consent law for breast
cancer was passed. (There are now 18 states with similar
laws.) The personal repercussion for me was that I could no
longer buy malpractice insurance. At that time physicians
controlled the only two doctors’ liability insurance
companies in the state. Losing my malpractice insurance
meant I lost my hospital privileges. I practiced “bare”
(without insurance) for the next two years. Until this
writing I have not told this final chapter of the story—I
never wanted others to know that my colleagues retaliated
against me for making them tell women the truth about breast
cancer.

My St. Helena Hospital
Experience

In 1986 I was invited by the
administration of the Seventh Day Adventist St. Helena
Hospital in Napa Valley, California to run the McDougall
Program as their lifestyle residential program. This was a
good match because their founding religion believes in a
vegetarian diet and a healthy lifestyle. (I am not an
Adventist.) This hospital was also considered one of the
best heart surgery centers in the country. Even then it
seemed odd to me to invite a doctor who is against most
heart surgeries to work at a hospital that makes 80% of its
income from heart disease.

Now that I was working at a
respected hospital, I figured, I might be able to get
medical insurance to pay for patients to attend my program.
I approached several well-known companies. I argued that our
program could treat heart patients at a fraction of the cost
of bypass surgery ($4,000 vs. $100,000). No matter how hard
I tried to convince them, the sale was impossible. A
representative from one large insurer told me that they were
not interested in my approach because it required the
cooperation of the patient, and all the bypass surgeon had
to do to relieve chest pain was to get the patient to
willingly lie down on the table. They apparently had little
faith in patients’ judgment and willpower. I countered,
“But, some patients will change their diet and they deserve
this alternative.” After some contesting I finally got the
real answer, “McDougall you just don’t get it. As an
insurance company we take a piece of the pie and the bigger
the pie the more we get.”

Working at a heart surgery
center I had many chances to talk to surgeons and
cardiologists—some of them actually became my friends. I
told these heart doctors on several occasions that I would
send all of my patients to them for a second opinion if they
would return the favor. I got no takers. My kindest feedback
came from the radiologists. They would tell me, “McDougall,
we know your diet works. We see the repeat angiograms of
their heart arteries showing reversal.” During my sixteen
years at St. Helena Hospital, I sent many patients to other
doctors for a second opinion and treatments, but I did not
receive a single referral from a local doctor in return.
How unique, that the population served by this hospital
seemed to have no need for instruction on healthier eating
(from me or anyone else). On many occasions I did, however,
care for the physicians at St. Helena Hospital, their
spouses, and their children.

My Departure from St.
Helena Hospital in 2002

I have fond memories of those
years working at the hospital. Thousands of people were
helped with the aid of the talented and caring professional
staff working for St. Helena Hospital. But, the program
never seemed to grow in numbers in this setting. Maybe
people saw a contradiction of health (my program) and
medical treatment (the hospital). Even though I was a
national figure appearing at that time on most of the top TV
and radio shows nationwide with my bestselling books, our
census was far lower than it should have been.

In 2002 an opportunity arose
to enlarge the McDougall Program and to help many more
people. Dr. Roy Swank, the inventor for the
dietary treatment of multiple sclerosis, offered me the
opportunity to open my live-in program to treat his patients
with MS. This was a win-win opportunity for everyone and I
expected an enthusiastic welcome from the hospital
administration. After lengthy discussions they told me that
they did not want to be associated with MS patients, as if
this would be a stigma. The real reason may have been that
treating MS patients for any hospital would be very
low-profit. I explained that we are: a hospital and our
primary purpose is to treat the sick, a special hospital
because of the religious foundation, and even more
exceptional because of the Adventists’ belief in diet
therapy. I concluded no better match could have been made.
They were steadfast. My contract renewal was due for
signature in five days. I turned it in with “VOID” written
over the front page. I was told later that they had thought
I would never leave them because without the organization
they provided the McDougall Program could not exist.

Other McDougall Programs

But, I had run the McDougall
Program many times without them. Between 1999 and 2001 I
ran my program in Minneapolis, Minnesota for Blue Cross Blue
Shield—the medical insurance company. During this three-year
period, with three different groups of their employees, I
was able to show the same remarkable health benefits we were
getting at St. Helena Hospital: weight loss, reduction in
cholesterol, blood pressure, and sugars; relief of
indigestion, constipation, arthritis, etc. This time I was
also able to document a 44% reduction in healthcare costs
for each of the three groups based on the insurance
company’s own claims data. I had had a similar experience
in Lakeland, Florida caring for some of the employees of
Publix Supermarkets. Both of these remote programs were run
out of local hotels. I can set up a 10-day McDougall Program
in any city in the US within 72 hours. I still can’t
understand why anyone would think the McDougall Program
would depend upon anything other than sensible people
looking to regain their lost health and appearance.

The Santa Rosa Clinic and
Our Future

In May of 2002 we began our
first McDougall Program at the Flamingo Resort in Santa
Rosa, California. Our yearly census quadrupled in no time.
The food now tastes as if Mary made it at home. Like many
things in life, we have asked ourselves why we waited so
long to take over complete control of our program. Our
non-profit foundation has raised money and has begun a
study with Oregon Health & Science University on the
dietary treatment of Multiple Sclerosis. The web site,
www.drmcdougall.com, is receiving 7 to 8 million hits
a
month. The McDougall, MD TV show is playing in 95% of
households worldwide. Dr. McDougall’s Right Foods are in
nearly 4000 stores. Our free newsletter is going out to
30,000 people monthly. We make new friends every month at
our sessions: 10-day medical live-in programs, 5-day
programs, Advanced Study Weekends, Celebrity Chef Weekends,
and Adventure Trips. Seems like we’re on a productive
track.

I have
just co-authored
AB 1478, a bill asking for even more informed consent
for the people of the state of California. One part of this
bill requires doctors to tell patients that heart surgery
does not save lives in most cases and that diet is a real
answer. The second part requires doctors to tell patients
that common medications for type-2 diabetes increase their
risk of dying and that diet will help them greatly. The bill
is in committee now. I wonder if there will be any
negative repercussions for me from my colleagues when
AB 1478 is passed into law? I can’t change, my parents
taught me to tell the truth, always, and my life is guided
by my passions. Medical care is changing for the better
because millions of informed people are demanding improvedhealth, rather than more treatments. I am optimistic
and so should you be.